How do I know?
Because this is it—the worst blind date in history. Anything that isn't this is a walk in the park. If a team of armed assassins burst into this bottom-of-the-barrel restaurant, put a bag over my head, and abducted me, I’d thank them. That’s how bad this is.
Hamilton Wood—or Ham, as he prefers to be called—is a living, breathing nightmare. On steroids.
“The last chick I nailed was a fuckin’ stick, which was awesome. Sometimes I wondered if I was going to snap her in half during sex. You have some junk in the trunk, but I’m willing to deal with it while you lose a little weight—ten to twelve pounds,” pausing, he looks me over critically. My eyes widen when he leans out to the side of the table and looks down toward my legs.
“Well, actually,” he says as he rights himself, “I’d say fifteen or twenty. I've dated chicks with eating disorders before, so if you need any pointers, I’m your guy. I’ve got the inside track on the whole thing. Did you know some people eat cotton balls to get the feeling of being full without taking in any calories?”
According to my last physical, I’m six pounds underweight for my height, so this dickhead telling me I’ve got junk in the trunk is laughable. If I lost five pounds, I’d look unhealthy—fifteen to twenty would result in my being skin and bones. I guess Ham thinks all women should look like a more emaciated version of Kate Moss circa nineteen ninety-four.
He waves his hand dismissively when he notices I’m glaring at him. “Don’t panic, babe. I’ll work with you,” he says, as if that’s somehow appealing. “Besides, at your current weight, you can handle the ol’ helmet head without any problem. I might not have the biggest, but it’s the best. Whoever said size matters doesn’t know how to work with wood.”
He stares at me expectantly and wiggles his professionally shaped eyebrows dramatically. “Get it? Work with wood?”
Work.
With.
Wood.
“Uh, yeah,” I mumble. “I get it. Your last name is Wood.”
I stare at him in silent horror as he roars with laughter at his joke. Realizing he’s laughing alone, he abruptly stops. Cocking his head, he narrows his eyes and studies my head like there might be a test later. “What the fuck is the deal with your hair?”
Reaching up, I finger the bottom of my chin-length hair. I love my hairstyle and get regular compliments on it. “Huh?”
“It’s blonde, but I prefer redheads,” he says, as if I should have (a) known that already and (b) gotten my hair dyed just for this date.
“Also,” he continues, “I think you’d look better with extensions. More for a man to grab onto, you feel me?”
What I feel is sick to my stomach. Please, Jesus. Take the wheel. I don’t even care if you steer me right over a cliff. There’s a reason Thelma and Louise decided to drive into the Grand Canyon— and men like Ham Wood are it.
He doesn’t seem to notice my lack of response, or if he does, he’s unconcerned. Lifting his glass of soda, he chugs like it’s a red cup full of beer from a keg at a frat party. Slamming the empty glass onto the table, he opens his mouth and belches. Loudly. Paralyzed with mortification, I contemplate sliding under the wobbly Formica table to hide. I’m basically frozen in a stunned kind of horror, similar to how you might feel if a stranger walked in on you in the shower while you were in the process of shaving your cookie.
The one positive here is that there are only two other tables with people seated at them. The less in-person witnesses there are to this insanity, the better. This whole thing is a disaster. Ham is a beady-eyed, bleach-blond, short-statured guy with a distinct air of steroid use and a habit of flexing his muscles several times a minute, almost like it’s an uncontrollable tic. Also, the longer I sit across from him, the more nauseated I am by the overwhelming odor of self-tanner wafting my way from his side of the table.
I pegged him as an actor within seconds of when he walked into the restaurant because his first priority—after looking me over like one would a used car—was to check himself out in the dirty-looking mirrors on the top half of the wall that run the length of the room. On the brief journey from the front of the restaurant to our table, he managed to look at himself in the mirror more than a dozen times. Before taking his seat, he gave his reflection two thumbs-up as if he were The Fonz.
The amusement I felt when he asked me to call him Ham and I put together that he went by Ham Wood, evaporated in the face of his disgusting behavior. The only thing keeping me from tossing my soda in his face is the growing certainty that this whole experience is a practical joke. The things he’s saying are too ridiculously outlandish for this to be real.